TMNT: Jennika II #6 Preview and Discussion

[AlZarkovski]

First look:

Spoiler:

[lonewarrior20]

"that adorable little turtle girl."

[hypered1]

Well it's pretty damn clear that this takes place after the current arc in the ongoing thanks to that first paragraph.

[TigerClaw]

That Gazelle doesn't know whose she's messing with though. She's no match for the Turtles.

[ChosenOne]

I kinda want to see that gazelle run into Sally, for reasons...

[Mutant Ninja Anole]

Oh...that’s not good Lucia. You don’t realize you’re threatening someone with protagonist powers!

Neat dream sequence with the alternate Foot though.

[slashpieturtlemix]

Looks like things are spicing up

[AlZarkovski]

Full preview.

[lonewarrior20]

Originally Posted by AlZarkovski

Full preview.

Well, she just rose a few levels of villainy, not quite 2012 shredder but getting there.

[Mutant Ninja Anole]

I can’t help but feel like Lucia’s actions are a sign of desperation on her part. We first saw her helplessly banging on the door to get out of Mutant Town. While I’m don’t doubt she was always ruthless, her being willing to take these steps and risks sort of speaks to her frustration at being cut out of the mob family she feels she built, being trapped in a run down part of town, and just perhaps at having her humanity ripped away from her. I feel like people are going to criticize the villain for acting ‘dumb’ when she was supposedly this mastermind mob figure but I think we’re seeing her break down mentally here. The tension honestly isn’t so much what happens to Jennika, she’ll escape of course, but what happens to the kid. Even if Rossetti doesn’t kill him he’s going to lose his innocence.

For the record, I hope Lucia survives and makes a comeback after this. Maybe she finds she can’t hurt her kid after all and calms down? Maybe she becomes another player in Mutant Town. Frankly, even as she’s threatening her own kid, she hasn’t been involved in actual child slave trafficking yet so I guess you could argue she still isn’t as evil as Old Hob.

[Mutant Ninja Anole]

I hate to say it, but the conclusion seemed a bit rushed and at the same time talky to me. I’d be interested more stories with this team though, Jodi Nishijima art is definitely something I’ll be aware of going forward.

Spoiler:

To discuss the issue in more detail:

Spoiler:

The revelation that she was the one that hired the Foot (and by extension, Jennika) to take out her husband didn’t quite hit as hard as I think it should have. Maybe on some level Junior always knew (he can’t exactly be totally ignorant of who his parents are after all). But for Lucia, in general she seemed come off as hopelessly grasping about for some semblance of control on a situation she never really had to begin with. “I need to be hard and ruthless to survive and I’m just giving Junior tough love,” and all. I don’t think she would have killed him but she absolutely would have hurt him. I suppose there is a parallel to Jennika herself at the beginning, seeing Splinter as weak for not killing as much as Shredder, only to get her rear handed to her by the person she was calling weak. Best possible outcome for Junior at the end there. I sort of expected a darker ending, but hey, it’s good to see our heroes acting competently and using their resources like April on the outside.

I do like Alopex and Jennika as former villains who can relate to each other, though I’m sort of surprised the series didn’t touch on the relevant thing at hand they have in common: Both used to kill for the Foot.

[lonewarrior20]

i enjoyed it.

Spoiler:

i wonder if we're gonna see jr again down the road. so i wonder how lucia looks in orange.

[TigerClaw]

Just read this issue and really enjoyed it. It had a nice ending.

[Mutant Ninja Anole]

If I seem a tad negative, I suspect the mob themes put the Godfather on my brain while reading this and perhaps I got unrealistic expectations, or was expecting something extra explosive? Mob family stories are well worn but a well told one still works for me. Overall a good mini and, at the risk of being negative to the main series, I think has actually a good job of tackling some of the things I wanted to see from Mutant Town and from Jennika as a character.

[Cloudrunner]

Originally Posted by Mutant Ninja Anole

Spoiler:

I do like Alopex and Jennika as former villains who can relate to each other, though I’m sort of surprised the series didn’t touch on the relevant thing at hand they have in common: Both used to kill for the Foot.

To be fair, the writers kind of abandoned Alopex as "former Foot soldier" in favor of the focus on her feud with Kitsune. Remember that time she vowed to kill Shredder? And then had no interactions with either him or Karai after the Northhampton arc until issue 100?

[ChosenOne]

Originally Posted by Cloudrunner

To be fair, the writers kind of abandoned Alopex as "former Foot soldier" in favor of the focus on her feud with Kitsune. Remember that time she vowed to kill Shredder? And then had no interactions with either him or Karai after the Northhampton arc until issue 100?

Even more egregious, remember that time when she dressed some guys up as the Turtles and murdered them in the guise of "training"?

I liked this issue but was underwhelmed. This arc should've been the first half of the mini, but I understand why it couldn't be due to (minor) continuity issues.

[CyberCubed]

This is also the last issue of these Jennika miniseries. These issues and the first one makes 9 Jennika issues altogether. Hopefully this is the end of this, I don't think we need a Jennika 3.

[ChosenOne]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

This is also the last issue of these Jennika miniseries. These issues and the first one makes 9 Jennika issues altogether. Hopefully this is the end of this, I don't think we need a Jennika 3.

We do if that were how IDW Chien Khan is introduced!

He would be amazing as Jennika's arch-nemesis, especially now with Mutant Town being a thing and an easy out to explain his existence.

[Mutant Ninja Anole]

I mean, once Alopex saw Shredder kill her family from the forest, she logically would lose desire to beat the turtles except as a way to get closer to Shredder so she could eventually kill him. After she failed to do that at the end of City Fall I think we’re meant to see that as closing that chapter in her life. Seeing her keep a grudge against Shredder would have made sense I suppose, but then he died and...that was that. We’ll see if she still harbors hate when he reenters the story but well, she’d have to get in line for that.

Overall I liked both halves of this mini series, though yeah, seeing them expanded into 6 issues could have been good for developing either story a bit further.

I don’t know that I’m interested in another Jennika mini, what I’d actually like is a Mutant Town focused series that did stories similar to the Jennika mini. It’s odd that we just had a “City at War” arc when the situation in Mutant Town is arguably more fitting to an urban war scenario, with several established factions (Hob, the Turtles, Purple Dragons, The Foot, The Mob, the EPF, Null, Baxter etc,) all fighting for control in a wild west scenario. But we seem to be trying to resolve all that in the main book, and taking a rather low key approach it.